Both Reuters and The Wall Street Journal have recently published reports to the effect that Iran is in the process of transferring missiles it has sold to Russia for use in the war with Ukraine.
The missile, known as the Fath-360 or BM-120, doesn’t represent an escalation directly. The missile is a short-range weapon with limited range, about 75 miles or so. Satellite-guided, the Fath-360 is designed to be launched from a mobile launch platform, essentially a flatbed truck or similar, which can carry multiple missiles at once. Like we said previously, the Fath-360 doesn’t present a direct escalation, in and of itself.
But what does represent an escalation is the fact that, by obtaining this weapon, Russia can now use their existing missile inventory (which mostly have much greater range) to hit target farther inside Ukraine. In other words, the Russians are somewhat wasting the full capability of their existing missiles, so they’re buying the Fath-360 for short-range attacks, enabling them to use their longer-range ordinance to hit target further in.
Of course, Iran denies selling the weapon to Russia, but according to US intelligence dozens of Russian soldiers have been in Iran for an extended period of time, training on the new weapon system, and have already returned to Russia for deployment, suggesting that it’s only a matter of time before this new escalation takes effect.
